A "Department of War"--oh, I mean, "Defense"? That's realistic. But a "Department of Peace"? Absurd.
We Democrats need to immediately distance ourselves from such wacked-out, extremist ideas. Check out the Left Coast, Pot Smoking New Agers who came up with this ridiculous idea:
In 1792 in Philadelphia, two men talked about the drain of war on a nation and its people. They talked of their desire to build a world where young men could live without the threat of war. They talked about the Indian wars and the future of the new nation. They worried that the new government had established a Department of War but had made no provision for a Department of Peace.
The two men were Benjamin Rush, a medical doctor who signed the Declaration of Independence, and Benjamin Banneker, a surveyor, astronomer, mathematician and editor.
Both men, one a white American, the other an African-American, believed passionately that slavery was a great cancer on the body of the young nation. Both believed that war could be avoided by a conscientious study for peace.
From this deep concern evolved a document buried in American history, a plan for a Peace Office of the United States. Published by Banneker in 1793, Banneker's Almanac was the most widely read book of its time.
The idea of a Department of Peace concomitant with a Department of War was completely new. If adopted, it could change the course of history. Yet this plan has lain fallow for more than 200 years.
http://www.encyclopedia.com/...
This smart ass hippie Benjamin Rush even proposed defacing the main entrance of the Pentagon! Read it for yourself:
In order more deeply to affect the minds of the citizens of the United States with the blessings of peace, by contrasting them with the evils of war, let the following inscriptions be painted upon the sign which is placed over the door of the War Office.
An office for butchering the human species.
A Widow and Orphan making office.
A broken bone making office.
A Wooden leg making office.
An office for the creating of public and private vices.
An office for creating a public debt.
An office for creating speculators, stock jobbers, and bankrupts.
An office for creating famine.
An office for creating pestilential diseases.
An office for creating poverty, and the destruction of liberty, and national happiness.
In the lobby of this office let there be painted representations of all the common military instruments of death, also human skulls, broken bones, unburied and putrefying dead bodies, hospitals crowded with sick and wounded soldiers, villages on fire, mothers in besieged towns eating the flesh of their children, ships sinking in the ocean, rivers dyed with blood, and extensive plains without a tree or fence, or any object, but the ruins of deserted farm houses.
Above this group of woeful figures, – let the following words be inserted, in red characters to represent human blood,
"NATIONAL GLORY."
http://www.lewrockwell.com/...
Let's face it, "peace" is unrealistic. On the other hand, orbiting space-based weapons, "full spectrum domination," radioactive waste from "depleted uranium" munitions littering Iraq and Afghanistan for the next 400,000 years, melted ice caps, and 6 species of plants and animals going extinct forever every hour : that's realistic.
Sorry MLK, Jesus, and Cesar Chavez, none of you were "electable." And we're all about winning elections here at DailyKos. But hey, you still do serve a useful purpose -- our politicians love to quote you guys to incite feel good Kodak moments on the campaign trail. Especially you, Martin. We just love to quote you!
Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power. We have guided missiles and misguided men....
And the leaders of the world today talk eloquently about peace. Every time we drop our bombs in North Vietnam, President Johnson talks eloquently about peace. What is the problem? They are talking about peace as a distant goal, as an end we seek, but one day we must come to see that peace is not merely a distant goal we seek, but that it is a means by which we arrive at that goal. We must pursue peaceful ends through peaceful means....
There is something seductively tempting about stopping there and sending us all off on what in some circles has become a popular crusade against the war in Vietnam. I say we must enter that struggle, but I wish to go on now to say something even more disturbing. The war in Vietnam is but a symptom of a far deeper malady within the American spirit, and if we ignore this sobering reality we will find ourselves organizing clergy, and laymen-concerned committees for the next generation. We will be marching and attending rallies without end unless there is a significant and profound change in American life and policy....
Hate multiplies hate, violence multiplies violence, and toughness multiplies toughness in a descending spiral of destruction.... The chain reaction of evil — hate begetting hate, wars producing more wars — must be broken, or we shall be plunged into the dark abyss of annihilation....
This business of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation's homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into veins of peoples normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice and love....
I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin the shift from a "thing-oriented" society to a "person-oriented" society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered....
If I hit you and you hit me and I hit you back and you hit me back and go on, you see, that goes on ad infinitum. It just never ends. Somewhere somebody must have a little sense, and that's the strong person....
Don't let anybody make you think that God chose America as his divine messianic force to be a sort of policeman for the whole world. God has a way of standing before the nations with judgment and it seems that I can hear God saying to America, 'You are too arrogant. If you don't change your ways, I will rise up and break the backbone of your power, and I will place it in the hands of a nation that doesn't even know my name'....
Uh, on second thought, maybe those quotes aren't such a good idea after all. They'll scare off swing voters! Heck Martin, didn't you ever hear of "the politics of the possible"? If we want to win elections, we need to be tough. Talk tough. Shoot geese. Yeah.
Now, to all you granolas: you need to fall in line for the quadrennial electoral extravaganzas, and blindly and submissively cast your single, feeble, wishful ballot for the Electable Annointed One who will lead us to The Promised Land.
Crashing the gates? The only thing you'll be crashing is the couch, as you settle back down after Election Day to AnnaNicoleBrittanySpearsSimonCowellLindseyLohanParisHiltonNFLSunday. Sleep tight. We'll set the alarm clock and wake you back up in four years for another campaign donation.
Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio) may need to stage a sit-in on the House floor before a Department of Peace and Nonviolence is created.
Kucinich, newly empowered as chairman of the domestic policy subcommittee on the Oversight and Government Reform Committee, vowed yesterday to hold hearings on legislation lawmakers have discussed since the dawn of the republic: a bill to establish a Department of Peace and Nonviolence. ...
Perhaps unintentionally, other Democrats slighted the initiative yesterday. The majority governs room assignments, and Kucinich had to hold his peace press conference in a cramped room in the Capitol basement. Meanwhile, a gathering of centrist Republicans, the Tuesday Group, had a better room despite its minority status.
http://thehill.com/...
Pleasant dreams, everybody! :)